[In the following essay, Mitchell discusses the influence of Emmanuel Swedenborg's philosophy on Strindberg while he was writing Easter.]

Response to the 1901 Swedish première of Easter, Strindberg's modern passion play, was sharply critical. Tor Hedberg, for example, complained: “The entire [play] is superficial and sentimental and concludes in a childish moral. … Those who are edified by such may be so, but for my part, I decline.”¹ Yet despite this strong negative reaction, the play has been staged many times in the past eighty years, a fact which surely reflects the delight of audiences in seeing a drama in which Strindberg has, as Walter Johnson says, made the “interpretation of the Easter message believably human and comfortingly warm.”² Clearly, the resolution of the various moral and economic dilemmas faced by the members of the guilt-ridden Heyst family provides the play with a satisfying conclusion and an overall structure which underscores the play's concern with basic Christological tenets. Especially prominent among these concerns is what Strindberg, in reference to Easter, later calls satisfactio vicaria, the soteriological concept which is present in much of Strindberg's post-Inferno production.³

The fact persists, however, that although audiences and performers have been drawn to this drama, the work has remained notoriously resistant to interpretation beyond the most superficial level, as Aage Kabell and Martin Lamm lament;⁴ in their frustration, some have even gone so far as to dismiss it as “muddled” and “childish.”⁵ Recently, Harry G. Carlson suggested that we have failed to appreciate fully the allusions Strindberg had in mind in Easter, and thus missed much of the play's meaning.⁶ His fascinating examination of the play's various classical and biblical dimensions places the work into an interesting mythological context. The present study seeks to expand this mythico-religious background somewhat and to identify elements of the play with a further late Strindbergian wellspring, namely, the writings of Emmanuel Swedenborg.⁷ It is in essence a defense of Easter, for if the play appears wanting in dramatic tension and clear action, I contend that this fact resides in the failure of audiences to interpret fully what they see on stage, rather than in any deficiency in the structure or content of the work itself.

The highly complex nature of the play can be demonstrated, for example, by examining the figure of Eleonora, the Easter girl (påskflicka). She is a character Strindberg had long been developing: according to his own testimony some ten years after writing the play, she had already been “prepared” in Inferno and Advent.⁸ He also makes it clear in a letter written to Harriet Bosse that Eleonora has had at least one other model: “She is … related to Balzac's Séraphita, Swedenborg's niece.”⁹ Furthermore, critics and students of Strindberg have also been quick to point out the similarities between Eleonora and Strindberg's sister Elisabeth, who spent her last years in an asylum in Uppsala, a sister to whom Strindberg felt so close that he writes of her in another letter to Harriet Bosse: “She was like my twin.”¹⁰ Thus, three elements typical of Strindberg's authorship shape the role of Eleonora in Easter, namely, his habit of reworking the “same” character time and again in his literary production, his heavy reliance on Swedenborg and Swedenborg-influenced works for his own post-Inferno writings,¹¹ and the consistent incorporation of autobiographical events into his works. This concentration of influences in Strindberg's writing forms the basis for the following examination of Easter, specifically the thematic relationship this play bears to such earlier works as Inferno on the one hand and to later works such as The Ghost Sonata on the other.

The content and structure of Easter provide the audience with a drama which traces a classical comic curve, if in several truncated fashion. The isolated family, held up to public ridicule in its glass veranda, is threatened with becoming even further cut off from society in the small university town; but in the end, Elis and the rest of the Heyst household are spared by Lindkvist's kindness, and the play concludes in the hope of the family's eventual reintegration into society. This theme of redemption and hope is underscored on the temporal level by Strindberg's use of the divisions of the Christian Holy Week to label the play's three acts Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Eve. The progression through the holiday is further emphasized by the successive uses of Haydn's Sieben Worte des Erlösers (“The Seven Words of the Redeemer”) as overtures to each act. Likewise, Strindberg's use of lighting and atmospheric detail parallels this same descending and then rising thematic curve. In Act I, a sole shaft of light illuminates the stage, but even this small beam disappears by the last scene of the act. Act II begins with the drapes of the living room drawn and all natural light thus cut off; instead of hoped-for spring weather, there is nothing but cold and snow. Act III opens with this same gray weather, but concludes with the clouds parting and revealing the sun, “with the return of light and the joy of summertime,” as Strindberg later described it.¹² These staging details serve initially to emphasize the mounting difficulties of the inhabitants of the Heyst household (their fears about Lindkvist, their debtor; Benjamin's failure to pass the Latin exam; the possibility that Mrs. Heyst will also be prosecuted; Elis's worries about Petrus's relationship with Kristina; and everyone's concern about Eleonora's “theft” and the likelihood that she will be returned to the asylum), but they also underscore the eventual resolution of the problems, as Lindkvist proves to be generous and merciful, as Eleonora's crime is cleared up, as Kristina's reasons for seeing Petrus are explained, and as the family finds renewed hope of leaving the city and getting to the country.

The Heysts' desire to leave Lund and go north to Lake Mälare significantly foreshadows the same urge in Elis as he asks, “shall I get away from this dreadful city, from Ebal, the mount of curses, and behold Garizim again?”¹³ Ebal is, of course, the mountain from which the Israelites took possession of the Promised Land, but it is also the location on which they were cursed for their violations of God's commandments. Garizim, across the valley from Ebal, was a site of worship. “Understand that this day I offer you the choice of a blessing and a curse,” Moses tells the Children of Israel. “The blessing will come if you listen to the commandments of the Lord your God which I give you this day, and the curse if you do notlisten to the commandments of the Lord your God but turn aside from the way that I command you this day and follow other gods whom you do not know. When the Lord your God brings you into the land which you are entering to occupy, there on Mount Garizim you shall pronounce the blessing and on Mount Ebal the curse” (Deuteronomy 11:26-29; emphasis added).¹⁴ The significance of the two mountains is important for understanding the quest Elis is on, albeit unconsciously, in Easter—to move from Ebal to Garizim, from Lund to the country, from a cursed condition to a state of worshipfulness and religious perfection. The family's escape to the countryside thus represents far more than the possibility of their removing themselves from the critical society of a small town and Elis's dreams of marriage; the family's move will correspond to its spiritual purification.

That the university city of Lund is used as a symbol for the Heysts' woeful and cursed condition is hardly surprising, given the attitude Strindberg expresses towards it during his post-Inferno recovery.¹⁵ He continued to hold this negative opinion for many years, as he demonstrates in a letter to Nils Andersson only a few months after Easter was completed. In it, Strindberg discusses the plans he and Harriet Bosse are making for their honeymoon: “she wants very badly to see Lund, the Purgatory city, in passing” (emphasis added).¹⁶ That the family will leave Lund-Ebal and go to Lake Mälare-Garizim is the joyous final note on which the play concludes: “Now you must thank God, who has helped us come to the country!” exclaims Eleonora.¹⁷ Thus, the journey, if not yet complete, has at the least a projected happy conclusion. And as the family moves from Lund-Ebal to the country-Garizim, so too they move forward morally, emotionally and spiritually, from the darkness of winter to the sunlight of summer.

Given the almost uniquely happy ending of Easter among Strindberg's dramas, the question naturally arises as to how the family is spiritually cleansed. This dimension of the play becomes more understandable when placed in the context of other later works by Strindberg. The argument has often been advanced that such post-Inferno plays as The Ghost Sonata, for example, can be best understood in terms of Swedenborg's concepts of Purgatory and Hell.¹⁸ Key to this view are the comments Strindberg makes in A Blue Book, especially in those sections in which he discusses the concept of the “disrobing room” in Swedenborg's spiritual scheme:

Swedenborg has a disrobing room in his hell, where the dead are taken immediately after death. There they are stripped of the garb they have been forced to don in society and family, and the angels see right away who they have before them.¹⁹

How appropriate then that in the opening scene of Easter, Elis enters the glassed-in veranda with its ray of sunlight, remarks about the various preparations for the coming of spring, removes his overcoat and says: “yes, it's spring. … And I can hang up my winter overcoat … you know, it's as heavy—weighs the coat in his hand—as if it had soaked up all the pains of winter, the sweat of anguish, and the dust of the school. …”²⁰ Thus, just as The Ghost Sonata opens with a ship's bell to signal that we are on a journey, so Easter opens with a signal to those initiated in Swedenborgian theology that a journey is also under way in this play: we are witnessing Elis's arrival in the disrobing room, where he will be stripped, inspected and ultimately edified by celestial beings.

Swedenborg's Purgatory is, however, no mere post-mortem waiting room. It is primarily a period of instruction, and as Strindberg conceives of it, this spiritual dimension is not necessarily a geographical destination of the afterlife. “It is possible,” Strindberg writes in A Blue Book, “that he [i.e., Swedenborg] means not a location, but rather a condition of the mind.”²¹ It is into this state of mind, as well as into this “Purgatory City,” that Elis enters as the play opens, and it is here that he will receive his moral training during the course of the drama. Both the play and its author are quite explicit about the nature of this lesson. In a letter to his German translator, Emil Schering, from March 1901, some five months after completing Easter, Strindberg indicates the dread that weighed heavily on his mind: “My bride [i.e., Harriet Bosse] is now just as afraid of hubris (ὑβρις) as I am.”²² That this great fear of the one sin the gods will not forgive preyed on his mind lends weight to the appearance of the problem in the play and credence to the possibility that it plays a dominant role in Easter. Soon after the opening curtain the topic is broached in Easter, Benjamin, the student, comes home utterly dejected after having failed his Latin exam. Strindberg goes to great lengths to make the audience understand that Benjamin did not pass the exam precisely because of his overweening pride:²³

ELEONORA
What setback have you experienced?
BENJAMIN
I failed a Latin test—although I was completely confident.
ELEONORA
Aha, you were certain, so certain, that you could bet on passing.
BENJAMIN
I did!
ELEONORA
I can believe it! Don't you see, it happened this way because you were so confident.
BENJAMIN
Do you think that was the reason?
ELEONORA
Certainly it was! Pride goes before a fall!

Nor in this context should the scholarly error Benjamin makes on the exam be overlooked: “I wrote ut with the indicative, although I knew it ought to have been the subjunctive.”²⁴ Thus, Benjamin fails the exam because he is overconfident, too proud to be careful, so certain of his knowledge that he writes the indicative rather than the subjunctive, that is, he expresses an idea as an actual fact rather than as a possibility. Then, as Eleonora indicates, his pride goes before the fall. Likewise, Elis is guilty of this pride when he refuses to ask for, or accept, mercy: “I do not ask for mercy, only justice!” he proudly declares when Lindkvist confronts him.²⁵ Brought around to a more humble position by the possibility that his mother too will be imprisoned on account of his father's embezzlement, Elis is forced to listen to Lindkvist's summary of the situation: “there is a compassion which goes against the law, and over it! … it is mercy!”²⁶ Yet Elis misunderstands the full import of these words. When he finally shows greater understanding for Lindkvist's point of view and less concern for his own feelings—“I will think of your children and not complain!”²⁷—Lindkvist continues on his course, which is to take Elis through humility and powerlessness to understanding and the acceptance of mercy. Thus, he barks out his approval of Elis's “confession” and declares his intention to continue Elis's instruction: “Good! … Now we'll go a step further!”²⁸

This next step consists of forcing Elis to agree to visit the county administrator (landshövding), something to which Elis is at first utterly opposed. Lindkvist, it should be noted, is not concerned with whether or not Elis actually sees the governor; he only wants to bend Elis to his will and to have him agree to it, as he makes clear by the demand that Elis repeat his consent: “Say it again, and louder!”²⁹ With this stage of Elis's instruction complete, Lindkvist proceeds to one final, painful lesson: Elis must now thank his erstwhile friend Petrus, whom Elis suspects of being involved with Kristina. When Elis angrily refuses to have anything to do with Petrus, Lindkvist replies, “I'll have to squeeze you again, then,”³⁰ and he subsequently proceeds to maneuver Elis into a position where he will have to subjugate himself to his debtor's will.

At this juncture, Elis exhibits the wealth and depth of his ignorance: when he discovers that Petrus is now engaged to another woman, and that Kristina has acted as the go-between, he arrogantly asks: “And for their happiness I must endure this agony?”³¹ His reponse is one of complete irritation, yet with this question, Elis helps focus our attention on one of the main theological and philosophical precepts of Easter, what Strindberg refers to as satisfactio vicaria, when “the one … suffers in place of the other.”³² This soteriological foundation is, of course, the very reason the play revolves around the Easter Passion: salvation comes through grace accumulated by a god's or hero's suffering or achievements.³³ The notion that sin can be expiated by proxy forms the thematic core around which the play is constructed and together with Lindkvist's instruction of Elis in the disrobing room provides the play with its message.

Thus, Lindkvist replies to Elis's uninformed query as to why he must suffer for others by saying: “Yes! Those who suffered to prepare your happiness! … Your mother, your father, your fiancée, your sister.”³⁴ The extent to which human beings must depend on the good deeds of others for their fortunes is underscored as Lindkvist relates the tale of how Elis's father had once helped him by acting out the part of the Good Samaritan. This narrative has a typically Strindbergian moral, but with a new twist: “everything repeats itself, even what is good.”³⁵ As a result, the Heysts' crises are resolved, their moral and financial debts to Lindkvist annulled, facts which are emphasized scenically by the stage direction that, during Lindkvist's dialogue, “the weather clears up outside.”³⁶ Within the experimental laboratory he makes of the glass veranda qua disrobing room, Strindberg thus examines the effects of hubris and the function of satisfactio vicaria. The family falters on the former, but is saved through the latter. Although it has become common to see in Eleonora the figure of the suffering innocent, it should be noted that both she and her brother Elis undergo the process of suffering, and learning, for the rest of the family.

Thus, the two central characters of Easter, Eleonora and Elis, are signs of the “new Strindberg,” in the sense that the two of them together represent a composite of Strindberg's alter ego in the play. The similarity of the two names immediately suggests a relationship between them; further examination of the roles strengthens this impression. Surely Elis, the well-educated, domineering male who is forced into understanding by powers far beyond his control, presents us with one side of Strindberg, yet Strindberg himself speaks of Eleonora having been prepared in Inferno, in which the protagonist is clearly his alter ego.³⁷ His remarks in a letter written in 1904 on the relationship between Elizabeth, his sister, with whom he felt an especially strong bond, and Eleonora indicate that Elizabeth was indeed a conscious model for the role: “She was like my twin and when she died, we were grateful for her sake. I only want to show you ‘the Easter girl,’ who suffered for others, and because she took on their evils as her own, was unable to be really good.”³⁸ But Eleonora is also patterned on Balzac's Séraphita-Séraphitus, “she-he,” and “Eleonora's relative,” as Strindberg calls her,³⁹ a reference which suggests that Strindberg may have been aware of his recent capacity for accepting both the feminine and masculine aspects of his personality. This view is taken by Robert Brustein, who argues that the ability to accept the dual quality of human nature is one of the main characteristics of the post-Inferno Strindberg.⁴⁰ The problem of the male-female split, of masculinity in women and femininity in men, is an old one in Strindberg's works; one senses the heavy presence of this same struggle already in many of the pre-Inferno works, such as Son of a Servant. In discussing his spiritual and intellectual relationship with the landlord's daughter, a woman twice the age of the fictionalized autobiography's fifteen-year-old protagonist, “Johann,” Strindberg describes himself as an adolescent with “chubby little hands with long, well-manicured fingernails, small feet, slim legs and strong thighs” and “a fresh complexion”; the woman, on the other hand, he calls “tall and manlike.”⁴¹ The tendency towards such protagonists is typical of writers working under Swedenborg's influence, the pattern for such creations being his asexual angels; one thinks, for example, of Séraphita in Balzac's novel and Tintomara in Almquist's The Queen's Jewel.⁴² Only four months after completing Easter, that is, on February 25, 1901, Strindberg writes to Harriet Bosse of Séraphita, that she-he is the “Symbol of the highest, most perfect type of humanity,”⁴³ to which he adds—quite significantly when one considers that the première of the drama was only little more than a month away (April 4, 1901) and that Bosse was to appear as Eleonora—that this sort of character “much haunts the most modern literature and is assumed by some to find itself on its way down here to us. Ask for no explanation, but keep this in mind.”⁴⁴ Two related concepts thus converge in the post-Inferno Strindberg: the one, his long held view of sexual duality; the other, the literary and theological portrayal of the same issue in works connected with Swedenborg.

In my view, neither Eleonora nor Elis can be thought of as individually representing either Strindberg's alter ego or the protagonist of this play. The standard view of Easter has been that Eleonora is clearly the most important role in the drama, but only when she and Elis are taken together as the representatives of man's dualistic nature in a functional relationship do they represent a fully rounded figure. This aspect of the play has been overlooked because Easter can appear remarkably realistic, especially in comparison with such works as To Damascus and A Dream-Play. Yet it too has many dream-play qualities, such as the use of the Ausstrahlungen des Ichs (“Projections of Self”) device suggested here with regard to Elis and Eleonora as projections of Strindberg's ego, a device which in To Damascus I typifies the ancillary figures in relation to The Stranger.⁴⁵

Gunnar Ollén remarked some time ago that one of the remarkable things about Easter is that Strindberg could write a play about an Easter weekend in a small Swedish town and have something happen.⁴⁶ What happens in the play is, however, of considerably more complexity and much greater importance than what some viewers, such as Tor Hedberg, have seen on stage. Easter discusses more than the morality one customarily finds in the nursery: it represents several of the major themes of Strindberg's post-Inferno period, although in a somewhat embryonic and underarticulated state. Among other innovative aspects of this play, one shows Strindberg beginning to explore the idea of portraying Swedenborgian concepts on stage—movement into the spiritual plane and instruction in this otherwordly existence. It is a device he perfects most notably in The Ghost Sonata. Easter is thus transitional in certain respects: it mirrors much of the Strindberg we know from Inferno, Legends, and Advent; and it foreshadows much of what will be found in the twentieth-century Strindberg, especially the disrobing and demasking themes so strongly associated with The Burned House and The Ghost Sonata, and the use of the suffering innocent found again in The Crown-Bride and A Dream-Play.

In Easter, we see the refinement of a new concept of characterization, a harmony of maleness and femaleness, the influence of Swedenborgian theology, and the belief in representative suffering (satisfactio vicaria). These elements lead the post-Inferno Strindberg to a joyous and sunlit conclusion in Easter, in contrast to suicide in deepest darkness, so typical of his other works, as Strindberg himself later commented.⁴⁷ While Easter may not be one of the most satisfying of Strindberg's dramas, it is a fascinating workshop for many of the modern elements we associate with him in the post-Naturalistic period. What is perhaps the play's most fascinating aspect is its ability to take the outward form of the medieval Passion play, but to reflect the inward shapes of Strindberg's eclectic new brand of Christianity and to incorporate into it elements of his new dramatic technique.

Notes

1. Quoted in Gunnar Ollén, Strindbergs dramatik (1961; rpt. Stockholm, 1966), p. 170. “Det hela blir flackt och pjåskigt och löper ut i en barnkammarmoral. … Den som blir uppbyggd av detta må bliva det—för min del betackar jag mig.” All translations from Swedish are my own.

2. Walter Johnson, August Strindberg (Boston, 1976), p. 162.

3. See Strindberg's essay “Mitt och Ditt,” in August Strindberg, Samlade skrifter, ed. John Landquist (Stockholm, 1919), hereafter cited as SS; LIII, 467-470; originally published in Aftonbladet in 1910.

4. Aage Kabell, “Påsk og det mystiske teater,” Edda, 44 (1954), 161; Martin Lamm, Strindbergs dramer (Stockholm, 1926), II, 204, considers Easter to be one of the most difficult of Strindberg's plays to analyze.

5. C. E. W. L. Dahlström remarks in his classic Strindberg's Dramatic Expressionism, University of Michigan Publications in Languages and Literatures, VII (Ann Arbor, 1930), 170, that the action of Easter is muddled. Early in his Strindberg scholarship, that is, a decade before his Strindberg och makterna with its new appreciation for Swedenborg's influence on Strindberg, Lamm, Strindbergs dramer, II, 204, says of the play: “this childish drama is essentially a hymn to suffering: ‘happiness makes everything banal’” (“detta barnsliga drama är innerst en hymn till lidandet: ‘glädjen gör allting banalt’”).

6. Harry G. Carlson, Strindberg and the Poetry of Myth (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1982), pp. 124-136. Carlson suggests, for example, that the daffodil Eleonora feels compelled to take can be interpreted as referring to the flower Persephone picks in Greek myth, and that the play therefore is further connected with the seasonal cycle of death and rebirth.

7. Nils Erdmann, August Strindberg. En kämpande och lidande själshistoria. II. Genom skärselden till korset (Stockholm, 1920), 338-339, suggests that symbolism, Hinduism, archaic Christianity, Maeterlinck and Schopenhauer were the influences which contributed to the writing of Easter. With regard to the inspirational sources of the play, it is worth noting that a little pamphlet appeared two years before Easter was composed which bears the highly suggestive title Emmanuel Swedenborg, August Strindberg och det ondas problem: Ett föredrag, by Pastor (of Nya Kyrkans svenska församling) Albert Björck (Stockholm, 1898). This published lecture contains a statement that could well serve as the Stanislavskian summary of Easter: “The abuse of life is evil, but the suffering which accompanies this abuse is good” (“Missbruket af lifvet är det onda, men lidandet som missbruket för med sig är ett godt” [p. 39]).

8. “Mitt och Ditt,” SS, LIII, 468.

9. August Strindbergs brev, ed. Torsten Eklund, Strindbergssällskapets skrifter (Stockholm, 1974), hereafter cited as Brev; XIV, 21. “Hon är … slägt med Balzacs Séraphita, Swedenborgs Nièce.”

10. Brev, XV, 88. See n. 38.

11. The influence of Swedenborg on Strindberg has been a much discussed topic in recent years. On this issue, see especially Göran Stockenström, Ismael i öknen: Strindberg som mystiker, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Historia Litteratum, V (Uppsala, 1972), and “The Symbiosis of ‘Spirits’ in Inferno: Strindberg and Swedenborg,” transl. Matthew Dion, in M. J. Blackwell, ed., Structures of Influence: A Comparative Approach to August Strindberg, University of North Carolina Studies in the Germanic Languages and Literatures, XCVIII (Chapel Hill, 1981), 3-37; Evert Sprinchorn, “Hell and Purgatory in Strindberg,” Scandinavian Studies, 50 (1978), 371-380, and “The Zola of the Occult: Strindberg's Experimental Method,” Modern Drama, 17 (1974), 251-266. See also Martin Lamm, Strindberg och makterna (Stockholm, 1936). Nathan Söderblom, Professor at Uppsala, but formerly Swedish Pastor in Paris during Strindberg's time there, was one of the first to delve into this issue; in an article published just months after Strindberg's death, “Till frågan om Strindberg och religionen,” Bonniers månadshäften, 6 (1912), 435-441, Söderblom discusses the impact of Swedenborg on Strindberg. Among other fascinating bits of information, one points out that on Strindberg's night stand at the time of his death were to be found Swedenborg's Apocalypsis revelata and Stroh's biography of the Swedish mystic.

12. “Mitt och Ditt,” SS, LIII, 468.

13. SS, XXXIII, 46. “skall jag komma ifrån denna rysliga stad, från Ebal, förbannelsens berg och skåda Garizim åter?”

14. On the important role of Old Testament materials for Strindberg during the Inferno crisis, see Gunnar Brandell, Strindberg in Inferno, transl. Barry Jacobs (Cambridge, Mass., 1974), pp. 102-104. Spelled “Gerizim” in the English tradition, the mountain is respelled with an “a” here to conform to Strindberg's usage.

15. This is a view expressed publicly in Inferno, Legends, and Jakob Wrestles. A particularly vivid description of Strindberg's time in the town is given in Elizabeth Sprigge, The Strange Life of August Strindberg (New York, 1949), pp. 173-179.

16. Brev, XIV, 89. “Och hon vill gerna se Lund, Purgatoriostaden, i förbifarten.” This view of Lund was one Strindberg held for a long time: in 1905 he wrote of “Philipot from Inferno-Lund” (Brev. XV, 126).

17. SS, XXXIII, 127. “Nu skall du tacka Gud, som hjälpte oss att få komma till landet!”

18. Göran Stockenström, “‘The Journey from the Isle of Life to the Isle of Death’: The Idea of Reconciliation in The Ghost Sonata,” Scandinavian Studies, 50 (1978), 133-149; Sprinchorn, “Hell and Purgatory in Strindberg”; Stephen A. Mitchell, “‘Kama-Loka’ and ‘Correspondences’: A New Look at Spöksonaten,” Meddelanden från Strindbergssällskapet, 61-62 (1979), 49-51.

19. SS, XLVI, 49-50. See also 114-115. “Swedenborg har i sitt helvete ett avklädningsrum, där de avlidne införas genast efter döden. Där avklädas de denna skrud, som de tvingats anlägga i samhället, umgänget och familjen; och änglarne se straxt vilka de ha för sig.”

20. SS, XXXIII, 39. “ja, det är vår. … Och jag får hänga upp vinterrocken … vet du, den är så tung—Väger rocken i handen.—som om den supit in alla vinterns mödor, ångestens svett och skolans dam. …”

21. SS, XLVI, 26. “det är möjligt att han icke menar någon ort, utan ett sinnets tillstånd.”

22. Brev, XIV, 50. …

23. SS, XXXIII, 60-61. “Eleonora Vilken motgång har du haft? Benjamin Jag har blivit underkänd i latinskrivningen - fastän jag var alldeles säker. Eleonora Jaså, du var alldeles säker, så säker, att du kunde hålla vad på att gå igenom. Benjamin Det gjorde jag också! Eleonora Jag kunde tro det! Ser du, så gick det för att du var så säker. Benjamin Tror du det var orsaken? Eleonora Visst var det! Övermond går före fall!”

24. SS, XXXIII, 53. “Jag har satt ut med indikativus, fastän jag visste att det skulle vara konjunktivus.” While Benjamin's error plays specifically on the theme with which the entire play resonates, there is no doubt a secondary ironic edge to this mistake: Elis's panicked resonse (“Then you're lost!” [“Då är du förlorad!”]) is all out of proportion to the error and is clearly a gibe at the small-mindedness of the academic world.

25. SS, XXXIII, 113. “så begär jag ingen nåd, endast rättvisa!”

26. SS, XXXIII, 115. “det finns en barmhärtighet, som går emot rätten och över den! … Det är nåden!”

27. SS, XXXIII, 115. “Jag skall tänka på era barn och icke klaga!”

28. SS, XXXIII, 115. “Bra! … Nu gå vi ett steg vidare!”

29. SS, XXXIII, 117. “Säg om det en gång till, och högre!”

30. SS, XXXIII, 120. “Jag skall väl krama er igen, då.”

31. SS, XXXIII, 123. “Och för deras lycka skulle jag lida dessa kval?”

32. “Mitt och Ditt,” SS, LIII, 468. “den ena … lider i stället för den andra.”

33. On the concept of soteriology, see, for example, “Soteriology and Types of Salvation,” in Max Weber, The Sociology of Religion, trans. Ephraim Fischoff (Boston, 1963), pp. 184-206.

34. SS, XXXIII, 123. “Ja! De, som lidit för att bereda er lycka! … Er mor, er far, er fästmö, er syster.”

35. SS, XXXIII, 124. “Så går allting igen, även det goda.”

36. SS, XXXIII, 123. “klarnar det utanför.”

37. “Mitt och Ditt,” SS, LIII, 468.

38. Brev, XV, 88. “Hon var liksom min tvilling, och när hon dog lyckönskade vi henne. Jag vill bara visa Dig ‘Påskflickan,’ som led för andra, men tog upp andras ondska i sig, så att hon ej kunde vara snäll rigtigt.”

39. Brev, XIV, 34. “hon-han,” “Eleonoras slägtning.” See also Brev, XIV, 16, 21.

40. Robert Brustein, The Theatre of Revolt: An Approach to the Modern Drama (1962; rpt. Boston and Toronto, 1964), p. 122.

41. SS, XVIII, 137. “små knubbiga händer med långa, väl skötta naglar, små fotter och smäckra ben med starka vador”; “ett friskt hull”; “lång och karlavulen.”

42. C. J. L. Almquist, one of Sweden's greatest literary figures, was, like Strindberg, much influenced by Swedenborg. Tintomara, the protagonist of his Drottningens juvelsmycke, published in 1834, was conceived of as an animal coeleste, to use his terminology. As such, she is both male and female, beast and human, and so forth.

43. Brev, XIV, 34. “Symbol af den högsta, fullkomligaste menniskotyp.”

44. Brev, XIV, 34. “hvilken spökar mycket i den modernaste literaturen och antages av några befinna sig på vägen hit ner till oss. Begär nu ingen förklaring men behåll ordet i minnet.”

45. The extent to which Easter should be regarded as part of Strindberg's “mystical theatre,” as distinct from the dream plays, is discussed in Vagn Børge, Strindbergs mystiske teater. Æstetiskdramaturgiske analyser med sœrlig hensyntagen til Drömspelet (Copenhagen, 1942), pp. 160-162. See also his Der unbekannte Strindberg. Studie in nordischer Märchendichtung, transl. Emil Schering (Copenhagen, 1935), and Kabell, “Påsk og det mystiske teater.” On the concept of Ausstrahlungen des Ichs and its function in other Strindbergian works, see, for example, Walter Sokel, The Writer in Extremis: Expressionism in Twentieth-Century German Literature (Stanford, 1959), pp. 34-37.

46. Ollén, Strindbergs dramatik, p. 166.

47. “Mitt och Ditt,” SS, LIII, 468.